That was a great first step. However, that should not and will not be the end of it. The Liberal Party presidency is up for grabs with current president Ms Chris McDiven presiding over devastating and disappointing state electoral losses in several states. She has been tapped on the shoulder and shown the door. Her likely replacement is Alan Stockdale. According to The Australian, Mr Stockdale is a member of the party's Right faction and is expected to:

...bring to the party presidency a strong commitment to the principles of individual liberty and private enterprise, and to tackle factional infighting, which has been particularly destabilising in NSW.

Works well with Dr Nelson's message of economic (and increasingly social) liberty. I've only been a member for about a month or two and am already quite encouraged:

...a senior NSW party source said any opposition to Mr Stockdale had evaporated.

December 03, 2007

The "Green War" against prosperity has opened another front in Australia with our newly elected Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, starting the largely symbolic process of ratifying the Kyoto Protocol. More important is his trip to Bali, where the pressure will be on for him and other delegates to announce steep cuts in CO2 emissions by 2050 in a post-Kyoto world. Australia has (to date) accrued a Kyoto liability of 1% or roughly $60million at current European carbon credit prices and in this regard is much better off than the rest of the world. This cost is based on our CO2 emissions increasing by about 9% since 1990. Imagine what the cost will be if Australia agrees to cut emissions by more than 50 percent by 2050 as some have suggested.

November 29, 2007

Looking forward to the next three years. Also, having my Liberal Party membership forms mailed out.

Update 29/11/2007 6:00PM AEST: Andrew Bolt is not impressed. I am also prepared to disagree with him on a point or two:

Nelson having been a former Labor Party member may be a minus for insiders (no pun intended), but I think it will resonate well with swinging/independent voters. Is a personification of what Coalition supporters want to see happen in 2010: people who voted Labor in 2007 swinging back to the Liberals in 2010.

I think Abbott's leadership contest was a ploy designed to swing support behind Nelson (a more proven and tested conservative) in his bout with Turnbull. And it worked. Abbott's "reserving the right to challenge in the future" is I think a rearguard against a hot and bothered Turnbull or Costello: according to some accounts, Abbott has greater partyroom numbers than Costello had they gone head-to-head and toppled Howard. This is Abbott signaling the Right's warning to the Moderates.

Being from Melbourne, I understand Bolt's concern about the Victoria's absence in the leadership of the Opposition. Short of seeing a justification for why he thinks this absence may have "electoral consequences", I say "who cares?".

I have heard the message from Australians that was delivered on Saturday and whatever some critics of the Kyoto Protocol might actually think, it's symbolically important to Australians.

Kyoto is symbolic. He also said that any Rudd government initiative at next month's Bali conference "...must look after Australia's interests at the UN climate change meeting in Bali next month." I have not seen evidence to suggest Saturday was about Kyoto, but if there is, then Nelson's approach to Kyoto is very intelligent: support ratification but look out for Australian interests before all others.

He has also urged Rudd to continue the NT aboriginal intervention plan. So far so good.

November 28, 2007

Saturday's electoral defeat of the Coalition has resulted in the Prime Minister losing his electoral seat and thus the leadership of the party. There were three contenders earlier today, but one, Tony Abbott, left the race this afternoon, leaving him to comment that:

It's pretty obvious to me that Malcolm and Brendan [the two other leadership contenders] have more support and so I am announcing today that I will be withdrawing my candidature and I won't be running tomorrow.

November 24, 2007

Over the last three or four days we have seen two polls released that suggest the Prime Minister has eaten away at Labor's massive lead: yesterday's Galaxy poll has Labor up by 4% on a 2 party preferred basis with today's Newspoll showing a halving of Labor's 2 party preferred lead to +4%.

Little good news here. The culture wars and our contribution to the Long War are now seriously in play. The good news (if you can call it that) is that Labor have now rebranded themselves as economic conservatives. Based on the amount of pork that both parties have thrown at the electorate over the last three weeks, I would say that this is definitely not the case.